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Building on our Social and Emotional Competencies course, this course is aimed at experienced teachers looking to extend their skills in reflective and critical practice. Drawing deeply on real-life case studies, in which participants meet and learn how best to support children with a diverse range of neurodevelopmental differences, as well as plenty of practice-based scenarios in which participants can apply their emerging understandings, the focus is on a powerfully relational approach to teaching and learning in the early years.
This course strongly centres and celebrates neurodivergent learners and their families, and carefully unpacks and critiques conventional notions of inclusion, inviting teachers to weave their own neurodiversity-affirming and inclusive philosophies and practices.
On completing the course, participants will be able to:
This course includes interviews with:
Dr Jessica Tupou – Victoria University of Wellington
Dr Kate McAnelly
Vanessa Leaver – speech language therapist
Lucy Charles – occupational therapist
Arul Hamill – occupational therapist
Tami Harris & Lily Stadlober – Acorn Neurodiversity
Examines the ways in which normative beliefs and assumptions about development, behaviour, and ways of interacting can particularly disadvantage neurodivergent children and their whānau, and uses critical theories to position normativity as a problematic discourse in early childhood education.
Explores the concept of neurodiversity, drawing on the social model of disability to critically interrogate developmental discourses and the medical model of neurodiversity, and considering the implications of this for practice.
Explores the concept of inclusion, and uses it as a framework for thinking about how each child can be valued equally, treated with respect, and provided with real opportunities for their learning in early childhood settings.
Focuses on how pedagogies for building relationships, such as the pedagogy of listening and the ethic of hospitality, can be used for learning to read and respond to children’s cues and communications, and for developing curricula and practice that enable each child to belong and fully participate in early childhood settings.
Looks at the way we receive, interpret, and respond to sensory information, considers the many differences related to sensory processing that children might experience, and explores the implications of this for early childhood practice.
Focuses on what executive function skills are and why they are important, considers how neurodivergent children’s executive function skills may differ, and explores how all children can benefit from support to develop and build their executive functioning.
Builds on the learning about sensory processing and executive function from Parts 5 and 6 to explore the concept of thresholds. It describes how children may experience periods of distressing dysregulation when their thresholds are exceeded, and offers strategies that teachers can use to support regulation and respond to dysregulation. This part also explores differences in speech and language, and in motor planning and movement.
Explores how early childhood teachers can honour children’s ways of being and doing, and align their supports and interventions to their needs and goals, as well as those of their family. It highlights the complex, ethical nature of choices that teachers must make when supporting children’s development that is non-typical, and explores this in the context of speech, language, and communication as well as social development.
Explores the ways in which teachers might work with other people in a team approach to care and education for each child. There are considerations here for teachers’ own wellbeing, as well as for the increased effectiveness and wraparound support that comes with a team approach
Enrol yourself
Enrol others AND yourself
Group discounts of 15-25%
Lifetime access*
Personalised certificates
Enrol others NOT yourself
Group discounts of 15-25%
Lifetime access*
Personalised certificates
Please note, all our courses are best completed on a desktop/laptop computer or tablet. Because of the amount of content, we do not recommend using a phone.
* Lifetime access means for as long as the course is hosted on The Education Hub
Group discounts apply to the full price, and can only be applied in one transaction, not retrospectively, or on the addition of more enrolments.
Our standard terms and conditions are available here
